The bidding, which started at $500, had reached $14,999.99, by Sunday. The eBay ad promises one million impressions minimum. The two top bidders, “Dave-Texas” and “FivePercentCard_com,” don’t appear to be brand marketers. Baron said he originally anticipated that the ads would sell for somewhere between $8,000 and $40,000, based on an estimate Internet expert Jeff Jarvis gave the company.
BlogAds founder Henry Copeland, whose firm bid on the ad space but dropped out when the bidding topped $12,000, said the inventory’s value might be worth as much as $50,000. “Being the first advertiser on a cult show like this, with the ads actually being produced with Amanda, assuming that is the case, is worth a lot more than $15,000,” he said, referring to Rocketboom star Amanda Congdon. “An anal-retentive media buyer will get focused on the difficulty of verifying the viewership numbers, how many of the downloads are actually watched—and miss the novelty value and cult status of the show.”